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Dr. Richard Pocklington
[ 22 . Oktober . 2005 ]
INTERVIEWER PETER C. KRELL
Dieses Interview ist in Ausgabe 13 von GAME FACE veröffentlicht.
GF: Richard, you are a d&d-master;, right?
RP: Dungeon-master.
GF: Can you briefly explain, who you are and what you have to do with games?
RP: Oh, I'm very lucky, I get to write game worlds. I work for a company called Zeitgeist Games(www.zeitgeist-games.com). We are revitalising the original role playing game setting, the dungeon that existed before rpg's existed as a genre. Before there was Dungeons&Dragons; as a game, there was an imaginary place called Blackmoor. I read about Blackmoor back in the early 80's, just as I read about other places. Now I help create it. In addition I actively develop a world known as Ashtinia, bits and pieces of which, such as the upcoming module "The Sunken Ziggurat", are published by Goodman Games (www.goodman-games.com).
GF: Now Zeitgeist is closely related with Dave Arneson and some of the founders of D&D.;
RP: Some founders? The founder! Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax together wrote the Dungeons&Dragons; rules. But role-playing games were invented by Dave Arneson, when he adapted his napoleonics-campaign to become treasure hunting adventures beneath Castle Blackmoor, in the Blackmoor Dungeon. Gary Gygax had written Chainmail, a set of rules that allowed the use of fantastic monters and heroes in a tabletop miniatures game. Blackmoor is the beginning of it all, it's the origin place. It's very exciting to work with Dave, to be involved in a project that is revitalizing and elaborating upon the original dungeon. I have a great love for ancient things. I would say that being a dungeon-master is perhaps the oldest profession. Well maybe the second oldest. (smiles)
GF: Now, when it comes to mastering a session, what do you think are the most important skills a master must have, in order to have other people experiencing their creative role in playing the game?
RP: First of all we need to explain what a role playing game really is, and then we can go into the role of the dungeon-master. Role playing games are interactive storytelling. That's why I made the joke about the oldest profession. Storytelling is an ancient profession, a very ancient profession, to which we humans are well adapted. You know, we have vocal-chords, big memories and such things. Communication in a large part is about commands; telling people what to do, and about storytelling; telling people what has happened in the past.
These are the two fundamentally different ways of using language. You might also say that there is questioning, but questioning is really a combination of commanding and storytelling, commanding someone to tell a story. Both of these categories are rather autocratic. Both of them involve a relationship of power, someone gets to speak, someone gets to listen. "Dungeon-master" is really a funny word, because as a dungeon-master you're not really the master of anything. A storyteller is more of a master, because a storyteller gets to tell you how it was. A dungeon-master gives you the opportunity to help tell how it might have been. Fundamentally that's what it is. It's about having the role of the storyteller distributed among the group. There is no autocrat telling everyone what the story is, but instead, a dungeon master is a fascilitator, allowing those who participate in the game to each have their turn telling a piece of the story. In this sense, you can say that rpg's are really just a very democratic form of storytelling. It 's a strange mix I suppose, democracy meets storytelling. It's the dissolution and distribution of power through the group, not equally by any means, but compared to other forms of media it is intensely participatory. To compare it to another contemporary variety of storytelling, rpg's can be considered the opposite of television.Television is storytelling refined to a point where one person manipulates other people (the actors) as puppets, in order to tell a story to a huge number of people, who have no opportunity to participate in the telling. He can't even see their faces, whether they smile or not. Normally, when you are telling a story, you are interacting with an audience. You see when they smile, you see when they frown and you react to it, it's an interactive process. Right now, I have no idea if you are appreciating this story, or if you find it irritating. With television (as well as magazine writing and many other types of story telling), you have to guess how the audience is going to respond, that's what makes it difficult. Movies are the same. People who guess well at their audiences likely reaction, they are the good directors. Dungeons&Dragons; and the role-playing game phenomenum is the polar opposite of television. Instead of taking the storytelling tradition and refining it, so that there is one person who uses others as puppets to send a story out to many anonymous consumers, the storyteller sits in a circle with the others as a traditional storyteller might (and maybe gets a better chair, like this traditional storyteller might) but the dungeon master does not *control* the story, because there are characters that live in the story, who are controlled by the other people. It's participitatory, it's inviting, it's levelling, it's fundamentally a democratic style of storytelling. I don't think Dungeons&Dragons; could have been invented in a culture that didn't have a thorough commitment to equality, meritocracy and democracy.
There is a lot of very American ideology embedded into RPG's. The whole genre clearly stresses progress, achievement and advancement; some very core notions in our society. It's interesting that in order to discuss these core notions, we displace ourselves into a fantastic world in the medieval past. While medieval is all the rage, I prefer to play in the dark ages, when bronze was still lingering around, when the odd stone tools doesn't seem completely out of place and people feel privileged to have iron, instead of having it as a given.
In any case, the storytelling tradition here is displaced, thus even though we are talking about things that are contemporary we displace the conversation into the past.
It's fascinating that Will Wright and the people at Maxi's have developed a game called The Sims. The Sims is fundamentally stealing out of the RPG-genre these bits and pieces about advancement and career and opportunity and progress and takes them out of this fantastic world of the past and places it in the fantastic world of the middle-class present. Instead of getting a +1 magic sword as your in game reward, you get a +1 dishwasher, or even a +1 toilet. This is really funny.
Unfortunately I have to say, I feel that the Sims is the worst RPG ever invented. Even though it is the most popular, in my mind it's the most despicable. It steals what is compulsive, obsessive, repetative and basically boring out of our own world, rarifies it into a game and causes the players to go through these motions, where they are kind of pretending to have a real life and pretending to advance in it. They are pretending to have careers and pretending to have friends. Now it's one thing to play this kind of make believe in a setting that is fantastic. It's one type of thing to play out roles while sitting with your friends, communicating with one-another face to face. This is interesting, this is mind-expanding. However, when people, living in lower-middle-class worlds, sit around pretending to live in upper-middle-class worlds, just going through the motions of brushing your teeth and flushing the toilet - in a game, that's scary, just a distraction from real life. Its just putting people in a skinnerbox with familiar wallpaper. It's not good for them. It trains them to do inane things. Hey, I'm a dungeon-master. I believe in the light, I believe in the dark. It's clear, what side these Sims are on.
GF: Most certainly, in a RPG there are different levels of experience for every player. Do you think players find out something about their own character in real life playing RPG's?
RP: Yes, that's difficult. I'm interested in expanding on that. Now, I mentioned the light and the dark, but at the same time I make a point not to take the light and the dark too seriously.
On the note of good and evil, good and bad, I think gamers need to read more Nietzsche. They need a more complex notion of evil, they need to understand where it comes from. Gamers fight evil all the time, and they often do it uncriticaly. They need to be able to put themselves in the position where they can ask "Why is this guy the evil one?"
Most RPGs rely on a big table of associations, a moral space, so that while people are progressing through the achievement-space, they are also wandering, sometimes purposefully, but often pretty aimlessly, through a moral space. The moral-space in the D&D-world; is defined as slightly more complex than the moral space in contemporary American politics. Right now in America you only really have one moral axis. Left vs right. In a D&D; World, there are two perpendicular moral axes. Good vs. evil and law vs. chaos. This is one of Gary Gygax's key innovations that really helped define the genre for the last quarter century. While Dave Arneson invented role playing games as we know them, Gary Gygax's many contribuions really perfected the genre.
GF: In what way did he perfect RPGs?
RP: He elaborated things. No-one has ever been able to match Gary Gygax's skill as a dungeon-master. Many people have tried to imitate his style, many people have tried to achieve a style of their own, but read G1 through G3, read the Tomb of Horrors, read the original dungeon masters guide.
What he did in the development of alignment was as important as Dave Arneson's invention of hit points. He developed a multidimensional moral space, good vs. evil and law vs. chaos. Early-on they had lawful and chaotic as the lables on their good vs. evil scale. Basically law was good and chaos was evil. This terminology is derived from Michael Morcock. Gary expanded the terminology and decided: law vs. chaos and good vs. evil can be orthogonal, independent domains. An individual can be lawful/good or chaotic/good or neutral/good. There can also be lawful/evil, neutral/evil or chaotic/evil. You can also be lawful/neutral or chaotic/neutral, if you so choose.
I like both of those alignments best, because I'm more interested in exploring the law vs. chaos axis, than the good vs.evil. There is more in this world to worry about than good vs. evil. Much more.
GF: Why do people like adopting these complex sets of rules?
RP: When I studied anthropology, I was intrigued by a domain called structuralism. The study of the RPG world is a structuralists paradise. Gamers actually like to inhabit make believe world where the structures are more clear. The goal of the game-designer is to parameterise the world, to parameterise individuals, to parameterise their characteristics, to parameterise their abilities and most importantly, and this is where I think the game-system has faltered the most, to parameterise their moral sentiments. To me good vs. evil is pretty drastically oversimplified, I just don't think it's adequate material with which one might tell an interesting and meaningful story. But once you have good vs. evil and law vs. chaos - you've got a two-dimensional space. But it's really funny, because in America, you know, we live politically in a one dimensional space, it's just that one thin line leading from the left to the right. This left/right, unidimensional politics is ridiculous. Even if many Americans understand it's ridiculous, they play along with it. So for example, just because you are pro-environment, why do you have to be pro-gay-marriage? That's ridiculous. Environmental protection and marriage between men, these are independent issues, they have no relationship. It's funny to me how one person, because the are associated with one side of an argument to do with saving penguins is therefore affiliated with one group on the side of an argument validating or fighting gay-marriage. So it's interesting that American politics there's a one-dimensional axis, you know, there's the left, there's the right. There's the right, there's the left. Are you moderate, are you radical? There are only two questions that are needed to describe your political position. Really this space is much more complicated. It's not a two-dimensional space, it's not a three-dimensional space, it's a crazy topological nightmare. You need many dimensions to really capture the complexities of the affiliations. Because sure, there's someone out there, who, like you believes in x-y-z and not b. Someone else may be your opposite, believing only in the b and none of the x's, y's, and z's. However someone may be very similar to you except on the z. Maybe there's 26 dimensions, maybe there's 260. I don't know. All I know is: it's not one, not two, it's not three. Young people can learn a lot of good things from playing RPG's, but they come away with some negative lessons, too. Before I continue on about the distortion of the moral landscape, I want to tell you about what I think is perhaps the single worst lesson that gamers have driven into their heads. That is that damage can be healed. It's a good game-mechanic, hit-points, but it's unfortunate that it's not true. Damage can not necessarily be healed. So that is one of the metaphors the game uses. It teaches you to believe that if someone is hurt, a doctor can fix them. This is also a very American idea, based on excess trust in bio-medecine. Ok, back to good vs. evil and law vs. chaos. It's just not how it is at all. There's a lot going on. So when I write about Ashtinia, my world, I break those categories down and refine them.
GF: Talking about good and bad?
RP: Good and bad, law and chaos. I mean evil is nice to have, when you're writing certain types of stories or trying to start wars. Many RPG stories are about wars, so it's nice to have some evil around. I like to break down alignment into simple subcomponents. So while I still use law and chaos and good and evil I further break things up so that there are as many moral parameters as there are physical parameters. RPG's are almost operant conditioning systems, basically players learn what to do in the game due to the reward systems (experience-points and treasure). Once they learn the game, if they think they are going to be rewarded, they do the action. Most of these games have two currencies. An economic and an personal experience currency to advance in.
GF: I think this concept of D&D; basically does imply other elements, than only the language layer, which are for instance dices, which are maps, which are small figures you have in order to represent the game. Can these elements be augmented by computers?
RP: Oh yes, it's possible to use a computer. That was the goal of the new Neverwinter Nights by Bioware. That software was not so much a Computer RPG, but a tool that can be used to facilitate true role-playing. It's also possible (and much more likely) that people will use the computer to destroy the role-playing experience and instead just turn it into a stimulous-response electrical conditioning system. You can take all the heart out of an RPG and turn it into a button mashing level grinding nightmare. While I appreciate the game World of Warcraft and thank them for developing a very beautiful and somewhat interesting world, that type of technology is still light-years away from a true RPG world. Fable is still far away, but if we could have a fighting system as great as Soul Caliber, a landscape as rich as World of Warcraft and a system of player by environment interaction that took off where Fable begins allthewhile giving players the type of user content creation and manipulation tools available in Neverwinter Nights, then you are getting somewhere. I know that sounds pretty extravagant, but hell, we will have that, it's just a matter of time. A RPG with those elements would be more than an addictive stimulous-response trap.
GF: Now all this sounds like you wanted to make a game yourself. Do you want to make any computer-games, or any games?
RP: Yeah, I would love to get the opportunity to work in computers. I made made my first computer-game at age 10 1/2. It was called Troll-Killer. You had a choice of three classes and three races and three weapons. You would make your character creation decisions and then you would roll.
I like 12-sided dice for some reasons, in the D&D; there are all sorts of different colored sided dice, I like the 8 and 12-ones. So when I first learned about making random-number-generators in BASIC, I was happy when it rolled a 12-sided dice in the machine and one of 12 monsters would pop out. Unfortunatley Troll-Killer didn't allow for any decision-making in combat, so really all that would matter was your character creation decisions. I think that many of us who like this sort of game love the character creation options, it's a very important part of the game. Unfortunately, a beautiful character creation system itself is not a game.
GF: Are there any synergy possibilities between the D&D; world and computer-games, apart from these we have seen, like from Bioware or Blizzard? Are there any other ways to tackle such a field?
RP: The technology is not really as limiting as it was just a decade us ago. There's a lot of opportunities and there's a lot to be done. Right now, what we are finding, is that people are getting into a mold where a video-game these days is a photorealistic experience. Personally, I am more entranced by beautiful icons than I am by photorealistic art in games. I can't wait, I can't wait to see the soon to come reaction against this style of art and to see the upcoming DaDa phase in video-games. All this photorealistic stuff and all this reality simulation is just a bit tiresome. Sure it's alright, it's getting better, it's getting nicer. But there's a lot of more engaging things you can display on a screen than, you know, just another big guy with a square jaw and shaved head and a big fucking gun, running around killing ugly people. I'm a bit tired of that. Not to say I don't appreciate a dose of Unreal Tournament now and then, i just would like to be able to spice it up with something different now and then, and I am sure that the rest of the computer gaming audience is more willing to experiment with something different now and then as well.
GF: Do you think the concept of D&D; has been taken far from it's origins, particularily looking at the emerged computer-and video-gaming-worlds?
RP: Oh yeah, sure, I mean it's gone all over the place. I think it's interesting to find people in Japan making computer-games set in a pseudo-medieval European world. That's a bunch of cultural jumps. And they are damn good at it!
GF: There might be a reason for this. Why do you think are people so enchanted by the idea to play D&D-style; games?
RP: Oh D&D-style; games? You're talking about the game-mechanics or the setting? Those are different questions.
GF: Both.
RP: Yeah, the settings. I mean, basically, they are two settings for RPGs. These days, people are trying to add gangsters and cowboys. Something like Grand Theft Auto has RPG roots, but when I look at a game like that, in a setting like that, all I can say is what the fuck are people thinking to encourage teenage boys have these kind of experiences? It's bad, that's all I can say. But back to the RPG genres, it boils down to two important ones. There's the past and there's the future. There is the arena of heroic fantasy, the medieval or early medieval period, white knights on horses with plate-armor, and then there is science-fiction. And generally, we're not talking like tomorrow, were talking about way out there... I mean, there's a edge for cyberpunk and there's an edge for ancient Greece and Rome, but these just don't compare.
Myself, I just wrote a thing, set in a Mesopotamian setting. What captures us about those settings is difficult to understand. I mean, I see, how a progress-oriented civilisation, like America, is particularily obsessed with what the future might be. So we have science-fiction as a very important genre. Thats no big surprise. But also, in terms of creating a game and creating a story, science-fiction is fun, because you can do what you want. Destroy the world. Advance your favorite culture to the space age. Take the same old shit and spread it over 16 planets or take 16 completely different planets and jam it all in one space-station. You get a lot of flexibility with scifi. Science-fiction games and science-fiction RPGs are less successful than fantasy ones. They are more variable because you can do more with the future than with the past. When it comes to the past you have to draw on existing records, and thus the settigns are always somewhat historical no matter how fantastic. We associate D&D; now with high fantasy and Tolkien type worlds, but that's not their true origin, because from the beginning they had a bit of everything: aliens, robots, psychics and so on mixed into them. When I write I like to have a little bit of attachment to the swords and sorcery kinda pseudo medieval stuff, but I like to bring to bear bits and pieces from all sorts of archaic cultures into the mix, like pacific north-west coast cannibal cults.
Canibals in canoes living on the shore of a huge foggy ocean. There's a lot of great stuff out there. Take Sumeria for example, you've got ancient, bearded, head-shaved priests, making sacrifices on great, stony ziggurats, that's good stuff. There are lots of good historical genres that are not well represented, yet.
In some sense, because America is still primarily anglophone in some respects. These games are most often set in pseudo-British history. It's a common cultural heritage, that the dominant over-class pull from to define themselves. I think really the more America becomes a big melting pot of a little bit of everyone, a certain fraction of the population are going to further immerse themselves in the myths that they think of as being attached to their ethnicity.
Tolkien's world is very white. I think any culture that had expanded this far over the earth, had become democratic and invented RPGs as a genre, would have used an important time of it's history as the focal-point for it's games.
GF: Now, you also hold a PhD in anthropology from Standford University. Let's speak of these implications, too. Your dissertation includes examinations about the statistics of certain language-patterns within languages. Did you find any similarities, when you apply your findings to the D&D-space;?
RP: We don't have good myths these days. We have a decrepit mythology. It's unfortunate, but that's how it is. What I've done with my PhD is by read broadly into the history of myth and learn a bunch of history and pre-history. Now I try to bring the stories that I've learned in the course of my stories into the game. I try to make the history seem attractive. However at the same time, by studying anthropology, you get to learn about colonialism, how bad it is and how unfortunate it is for the people who become colinized. So, when I write, I make sure to show the lives of some of the colonized people in the world.
Also, in studying anthropology you get to know a little bit about language and how different languages shape people's thinking. So in my world, the kind of languages you speak have advantages when used for differenrt purposes. Not all languages are created equal. For example, in most D&D-worlds;, there are many different languages, and all of them have a written form. My world, there's seven languages, but only two have written forms and these two have different origins. So if you're gonna write, you're gonna speak one of the two high-languages. The five lower-languages, at that point of their history have not developed any scripts. However, if you speak the language of the hunting people, you get a bonus when whispering to your friends because really, the languages of hunting peoples often involve a lot of gestures and soft sounds that are difficult for others to pick up on, they are just fundamentally stealthy languages.
GF: What role does language play in your games? When I was experiencing your D&D; sessions, one of the players said "I'm gonna yell!" this and that at this orc; and in response you asked him "In which language will you say it?".
RP: (smiles)First of all, in my world there are no orcs. I use a system of 7 languages, they are all related in a tree-like diagram, and the represent the seven different primary cultures in the world we play in. I believe that most fantasy worlds are too crowded, too full of stuff. Full of names that don't do much more than confuse the players. I try and make the world as simple, as symmetrical and as compelling as possible. It's kind of minimalist fantasy, so to speak. I don't crowd the place with stuff. In my world there are beastmen, there are savages, there are barbarians, there are nomads, there are peasants, there are ancients and there are the civilized folk. Pretty simple, pretty basic, but at the same time, it really fills in the various cultural sterotypes types that a 4th century Roman geographer might use.
Normally in D&D; there is a language known as the common tongue in which most communication is done in. I hate the common tongue. I mean, it's just so anglocentric. There is no common tongue. In those days, in those dark ages, there was no common tongue. In some sense Latin, in that world, would be the common tongue, but still not that many people use it on a daily basis. However, because Latin was the language of the conquerers, you might get into a bit of trouble when using that language in a rural situation. Your tounge might get you killed. I like that kidn of stuff, I think it adds a lot to the game, and so when we roleplay, we talk in funny accents to distinguish which language we are using. It's a lot of fun. When I role play one of the high-culture guys, who I call Ashtinians, I speak in a thick French accent. It really adds a lot to the game, especially in terms of humor.
GF: Ok, enough on language. Let's talk about magic a bit before we finish. I think it's interesting to see enough space for magic in a game world that has been created by someone, who's does not believe in it.
RP: I don't believe in magic at all. I'm a straight up skeptical atheist, I don't believe in extraterrestrials visiting our planet, maybe they are far away, but they haven't been here. I don't believe in extrasensory perception of any kind. I believe we know a lot about some senses, maybe there's an electromagnetic sense, but it's gotta be scientifically discernable. I don't believe that you can send mental messages, I don't believe you can speak with the dead. I don't believe in spirits. Not at all. I have studied James Frazier and the other late victorian anthropologists and I think they were right on the mark in their approach to exploring why people believe such things. So while I do not believe in gods or magic, I think that they are a natural part of the human condition and that thinking about them is good for the imagination. It's fun to tell stories about the unreal. But you're not gonna be reading my mind, no time soon. (smiles)
GF: There you might have a point.
RP:That's my opinion. Sure, it's possible all sorts of stuff goes on, it's possible, god is standing right behind me, ready to hit me with a thunderbolt... I'm not worried. There's so much stuff to worry about, so much stuff to think about. It's just no worth it. Worrying about the supernatural is basically mocking natures power.
GF: Besides of the contradictions, which are existing in any world and character, you are trying to distance yourself from the regular D&D; rule-settings by releasing a new basic game-concept, that is more comedy-oriented. Could you tell us more about this new project of yours?
RP: I'm hesitant to talk about it much, because of non-disclosure agreements with the publisher, but I can tell you a little bit: I'm working on a new game-concept, that has a solid thread of comedy interwoven into it. RPGs have always had comedy within them. That's one reason why I never really liked the Vamipre and Werewolf settings, because it's so hard to tell a joke in those worlds. Really, I believe White-Wolf settings are beautiful and interesting and provide lots of great opportunities for character development, but if I can't tell a joke, why am I there, you know? I'm not really big into tragedy. I just can't do. I mean, it's much more difficult to tell a good tragedy. Heroic stories and comedy. They mix well together. The comedic RPG we are working on is not an all out comedy. While there is a humorous element in it, that's not the whole story. Basically we are expanding the way the game works, the achievement motivation, the experience points the levels and so on. We are extending that into a more complicated moral-space. The logic is that the characters are going to spend most of their effort exploring the moral-space, rather than exploring the gold-space or the experience-point-space. However, we hope they are going to have more than a few laughs along the way. Humor is the best teacher.
Dr. Richard Pocklington ist Auslandskorrespondent von GAME FACE in Amerika. Anfragen an: richard1@stanford.edu
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